CONTROVERSY is smouldering on about whether smoking should be stubbed out in council refuse wagons.

Hyndburn Council chief executive Mike Chambers, said there was a health-based view that a total ban on smoking in council-owned vehicles would be sensible.

But the operations department says an absolute ban is unreasonable.

One idea is to restrict smoking in vehicles, but not impose an outright ban.

Refuse collection crews would agree among themselves whether to have a non- smoking cab or not.

Hyndburn personnel and general purposes committee deferred a decision and referred the issue back to a smoking policy working group. Mr Chambers said the choices were to go for restriction, an absolute ban or total derestriction.

Councillor Sheelagh Delaney said: "Perhaps the answer is that if one person doesn't smoke then nobody smokes."

Councillor Malcolm Peplow said: "As a responsible employer, our overriding duty is to protect the health and safety at work of all our employees.

"Hyndburn is ahead of a lot of authorities on a lot of issues, but on this I would suggest we are some way behind the leaders and I believe we need to move faster."

Mr Chambers said the rest of the council's smoking policy had been approved and was being implemented and the only outstanding issue was smoking in vehicles.

Councillor Delaney added: "I don't accept we are lagging behind. We are leading the field."

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